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Have a Message? Say It With Gucci

For Resort 2016, Michele introduced what would become a signature slogan for the house, L’aveugle par amour, seen here on a delicate, semi-sheer dress. The phrase translates from French to mean “blind for love.”

Slogan tees—and sloganeering—is nothing too new. Katharine Hamnett made big letters with bold messaging the talk of the London scene in the ’80s, which was reborn through Henry Holland’s punny tees of the aughts, and continues in fashion’s current obsession with political slogans on tees, pins, and jackets. But like all things that Gucci’s Alessandro Michele touches, his interpretation of word prints is far from normal. His latest take on text appeared in Gucci’s Fall 2017 men’s and women’s show, where photographer Coco Capitán created phrases for the house that were printed on tanks, parasols, and T-shirts in her signature scrawl. Among Capitán’s prints were Common sense is not so common and Tomorrow is now yesterday. Elsewhere in the collection, Michele served up scientific names for animals printed across tops, like chiroptera (bat) and scarabaeidae (scarabs).

What makes Michele’s fascination with text interesting is it’s been a part of his Gucci vision since the beginning, before word-print-everything was fashion’s most widespread trend. Text and slogans emerged as a Gucci signature under Michele for Resort 2016, one of his first collections for the brand, and have continued to appear since. His love of wordy patterns might come from his general appreciation for texts of all forms; it’s worth noting that almost every show note since Michele’s debut has featured a philosophical quote and today’s collection had models literally handcuffed to books.